Storm Dog

by L. M. Elliott

  Sergeant Josie had thought of everything. She always did. Oh, I owed her so much. I felt awful. Had my asking her help and to bring me to the parade done something terrible to her? Where was she?

  I knelt to talk to Duke, tapping into everything Sergeant Josie had taught me about training a dog. Not pity, empathy. Reassure but firmly. No-nonsense respect for his ability to tap into his own courage. Then praise when he managed it. I got Duke to sit. When he had stopped trembling entirely, I gave him a handful of bacon. “Good boy. It’s time now, Duke. Time to show everyone what we can do. Okay? For me?”

  I swear that dog took a deep breath and straightened himself up tall.

  Maybe it was seeing Duke steel himself. Maybe it was watching Emma be so at ease squaring off with alpha girls like G-L-O-R-I-A. Maybe it was coming face to face with the moment that my BIG IDEA would either take flight or I’d fall flat on my face. But I felt the need to warn Marcus’s dad that there could be trouble, BIG trouble, at the end of the parade. He needed to know how much of a tempest he was getting himself into.

  “Pshaw, Ariel,” he answered. “I survived Desert Storm. I survived being a drunk. I survive loving a woman who thinks if she concentrates hard enough she can call up ghosts. This ain’t nothing, sugar.”

  He revved the engine. “Marcus would tell us to ‘carpe diem.’ Right?” He grinned. “Let’s roll.”

  But trouble didn’t wait for the end of the parade. It was already gathering itself and heading straight for us.

  From one direction, I spotted Sergeant Josie hurrying toward the truck, carrying two Styrofoam cups. Ambling toward her was a group of guys holding their own cups of slushies. They looked ordinary enough—khakis, polo shirts, respectable haircuts, shaved baby faces. But they were laughing and making stupid and really offensive jokes about some of the women they saw.

  They passed by the truck. “Jackasses,” Marcus’s dad muttered, hearing them. “Mind if I do a little proselytizing, Ariel? I feel some souls in need of saving from themselves.”

  But before he could open the truck door, the first one in that parade of jerks said, “Hey, look what’s coming.”

  He was talking about Sergeant Josie.

  He veered to head straight at her, knocking her shoulder to shoulder as he passed. Then he pivoted to stand right behind her. His posse encircled her. “Hey, Taco-head,” he slurred. “You lost?”

  Sergeant Josie stiffened.

  Duke started to growl, low, in the back of his throat.

  “Naw, she’s not lost,” said one of his bully buddies. “Bet she’s one of them illegal immigrants.”

  “Bet she squirreled away somewhere after apple picking was over last fall, when all the other beaners traveled north following the crop season,” said another.

  “Yeah, and she’s just now crawling out.”

  “Expecting to be taken care of by us hardworking Americans.”

  Marcus’s dad struggled with the door to get out to help, but it stuck fast.

  Sergeant Josie turned her head slightly to address the guy standing behind her. “You’re making a mistake, sir.”

  “Well, damn, boys. She’s a polite little taco-head. Where you from, chiquita?”

  The bully boys burst out laughing, sneering. She glared at them.

  “I said where . . . are . . . you . . . from?” He moved in closer.

  Sergeant Josie didn’t flinch. “Puerto Rico.”

  “See, I told you!”

  “Go back to your s**thole country, beaner.” The guy parroted the awful label he’d heard the president use to demean foreign countries with citizens of color. Then he pushed her.

  His buddies laughed again. Sergeant Josie held her ground. “Guess you flunked social studies. This is my country. And I’ve been serving it. Unlike you a-holes.”

  “Oh yeah?” The guy standing behind her grabbed her elbow. “So you’re a mouthy Taco-head. I know some service you can do.”

  Marcus’s daddy finally managed to shove the truck door open. He lunged out of the truck with a roar. “HEY! BACK OFF!” I see why people call on him to chase out demons. He was that intimidating when provoked by mean-spirited beings.

  Duke also hurled himself through the open door, growling and barking. I tumbled out to bring up the rear.

  But before we could reach her, Sergeant Josie had her assailant on his knees immobilized, holding one of his arms twisted behind his back. His drink was spilled in a slick of sticky-sweet blue ice, slowly mixing with her black coffee and a milky-white hot chocolate she must have been bringing for me.

  He was sniveling. “Get this”—I shouldn’t say what awful thing he called her—“off me!”

  Throwing their drinks to the ground, his Lord of the Flies pack started to close in on her.

  Until Marcus’s dad reached them. Boy, did they scatter then, especially as Duke rushed to Sergeant Josie’s side. He barked ferociously at the man she’d pinned, all the fur along his spine raised. He’d have been scary as a hellhound except for that top hat I’d put on him that popped up and down as he barked.

  Even so, her assailant cowered and whimpered. Sergeant Josie held on to him.

  “This blockhead is not worth it, ma’am,” Marcus’s dad said to her. “Trust me.”

  Sergeant Josie didn’t let go. Her expression was battle-ready fierce.

  Marcus’s dad looked over his shoulder at the crowd and then back to her. “There are a whole lot of cops round here, ma’am. They shouldn’t, but they might listen to this idiot. Any claims he might want to make. About you. About what happened. You don’t want to miss today sitting in their holding cell. I’ve been there myself and I can tell you the view stinks.”

  “Parade starting in five minutes. Five minutes! Everyone to their floats!” a megaphoned voice called.

  Sergeant Josie looked up at Marcus’s dad. Slowly, the righteous fury on her face dissipated. “I see you brought reinforcements,” she said to me.

  After another moment of consideration, she let go of her attacker with Avenger-heroine professionalism.

  He fell flat to the ground, cursing all sorts of things. “I’m not finished with you yet,” he sniped.

  “Oh, but you know what . . . sir . . . I’m done with you.” She patted Duke. “Thanks, buddy,” she whispered in his ear. Stepping over her assailant, Sergeant Josie introduced herself to Marcus’s dad.

  Then she looked at me and smiled. “Don’t you have a parade to get to?”

  If you’ve never seen a parade live—felt the street throb and your heart pulse in rhythm with a passing band’s drum cadence, been swept up in all the colors and confetti and celebration—promise yourself to do it before you die.

  Better yet, march in one.

  As soon as we reached the parade start point and fed into that stream of music and excitement, we all came alive. Marcus’s dad had joined Sergeant Josie in the truck and Duke and I marched right in front of it, like George leading his band. And just like George, Duke strutted confidently. Armed with music, he seemed to have no fears. He was invulnerable.

  Me? I made myself stop thinking. I had an hour of joy ahead of me. For one hour, I was going to live a philosophy from one of my collected quotes: love as if no one had ever hurt me, dance as if there was no one out there to judge me, live as if this moment was a little bit of heaven right here on earth.

  I’d made a playlist on my cell phone that we’d tapped into Sergeant Josie’s truck radio with an auxiliary chord. It was pretty jerry-rigged, and my old phone’s juice would just barely last the length of the parade. But I couldn’t worry over things like that anymore. When Sergeant Josie cranked up the volume and Stevie Wonder’s lyrics—about the power of music to envelop and move us—filled the street, Duke and I became song in motion.

  “You can feel it all o-o-o-ver. You can feel it all over, people.”

  Walk, spin, stop, shake. Circle, serpentine, kick, bow.

  We were marching at the parade’s tail end, after the more serious floats a
nd city hall dignitaries had long passed by. After the queen and her princesses. After the NFL stars. After the fire trucks. After the marching bands. After the fife and drum corps. After the circus clowns. And after the Harley-Davidsons. So the crowd was loosened up and pumped to have some fun.

  Walk, spin, stop, shake. Circle, serpentine, kick, bow.

  I was vaguely aware of a sea of pink and green hats and scarves. Then I heard clapping and cheering and realized that all those faces were smiling, the people watching us were keeping the beat with us.

  “Awwww, look at the Fred Astaire dog!”

  “Oh my Gawd, he can dance.”

  “Mommy, can we teach Spot to dance, too?”

  Then the crowd actually began singing along in unison: “WE can feel it all o-o-o-ver!”

  It was beyond sweet.

  But that reaction was nothing compared with what happened when Midnight and her court had their moment in the spotlight. I knew I’d picked the perfect music for my rambunctious dogs, but I guess “Express Yourself” just appeals to everyone’s pent-up creative urges. From the moment the sounds of Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band boogied into the air and my ladies started to jive to the funk song, we owned our part of that parade.

  I had managed to synchronize a few of my girls’ movements. As Wright sang, “Express yourself!” my escapee dogs swayed and “sang” like a backup girl chorus. “Bark, bark,” they answered him, yapping on beat with the trumpets and saxophones, and turning their heads—left, right, left, right—to the 4/4 rhythm.

  Mostly, though, the girls freestyled. When Wright sang, “It’s not what you look like when you doin’ what you’re doin’,” the ladies jumped up and moved however they wanted. Kep spun round. Bodger panted like she was lip-synching. Lassie wagged her tail so her butt sashayed in time (almost!) to the music. Jump hopped up and down. Duchess put her front paws atop the truck bed’s railing and patter-stepped along it like she was playing a piano.

  Midnight simply nodded her head regally until the finale. When the 103rd Street Band instrumentalists jammed and Wright scat-sang and then repeated over and over, “Express yourself!” Midnight stood and turned around, her pink tutu swinging prettily. She barked in a friendly way at the crowd, like she was encouraging them to join in.

  Danged if some people didn’t take her up on the invitation to express themselves, too! I could hardly believe it. The very first person to step out of the crowd onto the street pavement to join in our little parade was Ms. Math, my algebra teacher, carrying a poodle she’d dyed pink for the Festival. I kid you not. She fell in behind Sergeant Josie’s red truck and swung that poodle back and forth in time to the funk beat. I’d never seen her smile that big—not even as she speed-solved the trickiest of equations at the whiteboard!

  I’d timed the playlist to alternate between Wonder and Wright for the fifty minutes it would take us to march the entire length of the parade, so Duke and I could switch off with the girls. “Express Yourself” played eight times over as we snaked through the parade route. By the time we’d reached the grandstand, we had two dozen dogs and their owners trailing us.

  Old, young; tall, short; graceful, gangly; dignified, ridiculous. They did their own versions of the twist, the Macarena, the pony, the polka. One lady did “the bump,” that silly seventies dance, crashing her bottom against her Great Dane’s side every other beat. Another woman tried some Irish step dance, her red setter nipping at her feet.

  As we neared the grandstand, people started pointing, then they laughed and cheered as loud as if we were in the final minutes of a tied football bowl game. Local TV cameras whipped around to film whatever was causing the commotion. I could barely hear Stevie’s music over it all. I dared to look up into the stands, hoping to see Daddy with the courthouse crowd. There he was, sitting right behind the mayor. Hopping up and down on my tiptoes, I waved both arms at him. He stood and cheered. At me! Daddy!

  And would you believe, everyone sitting in the stands waved back at me, too, like I was a Hollywood star or something.

  All I can say is there have to be a lot of frustrated dancers out there in the world—people who are dying to express themselves, to let out their creativity in whatever way they can. I’d never imagined that my little moment of flight could nudge others into testing their own wings.

  Of course all that was about to crash-land. At the end of the block, where the parade concluded and each marching group disbanded, I could see G-L-O-R-I-A. She stood with her arms crossed, smoldering thunder in her face. Beside her was Mama, like a towering cumulonimbus cloud of outrage. And beside her—a sheriff’s deputy.

  Eighteen

  THE STORM BEGAN WITH JUST A rumble. You know, the kind of thunder you hear in the distance as dark clouds are gathering but which might slide by you if you’re lucky. Or like the warning growl of a dog you might be able to calm down with a treat.

  “Miss,” the deputy addressed me. He had the same kind of helpful smile the police officer who’d been checking inspection tickets had had earlier. Maybe I could talk my way out of this typhoon of trouble somehow. Coming off that parade, I thought anything was possible. “Did you have a permit to march in the parade?” he continued. “I didn’t see this float described on the list.”

  A dozen answers quick-flashed through my head. But I decided on honesty and keeping a lid on my usual angsty defiance. “No, sir, I didn’t. I’m sorry. Is that a problem?”

  “Well, yes, it is, miss.” The deputy glanced at Duke, then up at my conga-line girls. At the sight of them, he fought off a smile. I could see it. He must be a dog lover. I had a chance.

  “Oh gosh,” I said, and started to claim I didn’t know that not registering beforehand was a problem. But that was a fib. “Can I fill out an application now?”

  “I’m afraid not.” He thought a moment. “Maybe we can deal with this with a fine and a ticket of some kind.”

  “Wait! That’s it? You’re not going to arrest her or something?” Gloria and Mama shouted at the deputy, in unison—I swear—just like always.

  And there it was: the first zap of serious lightning, sizzling across the scene.

  “She’s a thief.” Gloria kept up the salvo. “Those are my clothes!” She pointed to my princesses. “My sweaters. My ribbons. My headbands. Ohhh—my tutu!”

  “Your sister taking some of your outfits out of her own home isn’t enough for me to arrest her,” the deputy cautioned Gloria.

  “Well, what about those dogs? I know she stole them. She and Marcus went to the shelter the day they disappeared. She told me they were going to take them.”

  “I did not!” I cried.

  At the mention of Marcus, I felt his dad get out of the truck and stand behind me—a total reincarnation of that legendary stand-down-an-army frontiersman, that scary-accurate rifleman Daniel Morgan. But even that didn’t stop Gloria.

  “I bet she stole other things. I bet she took money. She acts so weird all the time, she’s capable of anything! Right, Mama?”

  “I have no control over Ariel,” Mama said. “She ruins everything. I am ashamed to call her mine, officer.”

  My own mother said that. It’s not that I couldn’t believe it—that was precisely what she’d always made me feel and what I suspected she thought. The fact she would hurl such a hurtful truth in front of so many people didn’t surprise me either. She probably figured everyone would take one look at me and sympathize with her.

  But I just couldn’t stand it anymore. Not after the triumph, the thrill of that parade. Not after showing everyone what my imagination, the music inside my soul, could do. I felt a tsunami of pent-up hurt and frustration build in me. I started to scream how bad she made me feel, every single day. But in the corner of my eye, I caught the movement of Sergeant Josie opening the truck door and rising out of her seat. My mind flashed back to how she’d handled those racist boys calling her names. She’d kept cool. Collected. Even under fire.

  So I stood my ground, ti
lting my chin—that juts out anyway like I’m looking for a fight—in a go-ahead-hit-me-and-see-what-happens stance and waited. But I wasn’t above throwing one verbal punch at Gloria—for Marcus. Just loud enough for her to hear, I said, “At least I don’t dump really nice boyfriends just because they don’t fit my princess image.”

  Gloria actually blushed hot red. A moment of regret? Self-recognition? Or just fury? I’ll never know for sure because the next thing she did was grab me by my French braid. I twisted away, but she hung on and I swung us around—like I was one of those marlin fish Hemingway always wrote about battling to reel in. We toppled to the ground, all tangled together, Gloria swatting at me.

  “Hold on!” The deputy tried to drag Gloria off me.

  Mama actually shoved him. He fell on top of us. “Stay out of this!” Mama shouted at him, and then leaned over to hiss at me, “Just wait till I get you home.”

  All H-E-double hockey sticks broke loose then. My princess pooches didn’t like Gloria manhandling me. They started barking and howling.

  Sergeant Josie jumped out of the truck to quiet them. Marcus’s dad waded into the battle and in one lift picked the deputy off the ground to stand on his feet. The officer went after Mama while Marcus’s dad pried Gloria’s hands from my hair. Freed from her clutches, I took a swing at Gloria, knocking us all back down into a flailing heap. In the scuffle, I ended up at the bottom of the pile.

  One after another, Lassie, Bodger, Jump, Duchess, and Kep dove off the truck and came to my rescue. Dividing themselves as if on a coordinated commando raid, Lassie bit onto the pants-seat of the officer while Bodger grabbed Mama’s skirt to tug and tug to pull the humans apart. It took three dogs—Duchess, Jump, and Kep—yanking on the breeches of Marcus’s dad to move him. With them pulled away, Gloria and I came up from the ground, still slapping at each other, just as the deputy’s pants ripped open to his ankles.

  That’s about the time the TV crews started filming the fracas.

  Two more officers came running. One of them clutched a dog-catcher’s noose. Oh no! I panicked. Duke! Midnight! The girls! I was so distracted, Gloria landed a shove that knocked me flat.